Google’s ‘listening network’ could be vulnerable to US govt, NSA – Falkvinge to RT

Voice recognition technologies are part of the future, but should trigger concern that IT companies are essentially building “listening networks” which can be exploited by the likes of the NSA, Swedish Pirate Party founder Rick Falkvinge told RT.

Open source developers and privacy campaigners have recently been
worried about the automatic installation of the Chrome Hotword
Shared Module, which they say is potentially capable of snooping
on any conversation near the computer.

“There are a lot of technical nuances to this and it turns
out that you actually need to enable some modules for that to
happen. But the end result is there: Google is building a
listening network that I think is a cause for concern,”
Falkvinge told RT.

When downloading Chrome directly from Google, the user is getting
a piece of software which is already a black box, capable of
doing “pretty much whatever Google wants,” Falkvinge
said. But at least with the open source software user expects to
have “the computer is doing what it is supposed to be
doing.”

“And this is why this was such a huge deal,” Falkvinge
said. “Google bypassed this entire auditing process and
downloaded a black box onto what was supposedly a secure audited
system. On top of that a black box which had as its primary task
to enable the microphone, listen to what was said and under
certain condition sent that back to Google for analysis.”

Voice search systems are a perfectly natural development with
screens becoming smaller and keyboards going away, Falkvinge
admits. “It is absolutely, by every single means a useful
feature,” he says.

“But it is also important to realize that this means a
technical capability to listen to every desktop. It means
technical capability to not just listen to every desktop computer
but also to do so at the identified individual level,” he
explained. “They would know that this microphone belonged to
Rick Falkvinge.”

What is even more important to realize is that “Google might
not be a bad guy here,” Falkvinge said.

“The USA has overtaken itself the right to gag the good guys
and take over their capabilities. And I think that is the cause
for concern, with a listening network like this. I don't believe
that Google is listening to every room. I do not believe they
have the slightest bad intent, but there are other shady people
in the background that might use this for their own
purposes.”

“Which is why I advocate that webcams need a physical hard
shield before the lense now, and microphones need a hard switch
that severs the electrical connections,” Falkvinge
concluded. “Software switches are no longer good
enough.”